


I came for the view

by Butterfish



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Disability, Friendship, Internet, M/M, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-21
Updated: 2012-07-21
Packaged: 2017-11-10 09:22:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/464712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butterfish/pseuds/Butterfish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alfred's music got popular over Youtube and he tries getting in touch with his very first follower. But this proves to be a challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I came for the view

I first started posting videos on Youtube back in year 2007. Back then all I did was to play the guitar to the camera and I didn’t get a lot of attention. I gained a few more followers a year later as I started singing cover songs as well, but my real breakthrough was with my original lyrics. Suddenly my videos were on the front page and my views grew, I got hundreds of comments a day and I started distributing my own CDs, sending them in small, brown envelopes to exotic places far away. I was interviewed on the radio, on TV, and a record company called me to ask if I would consider working with them to release a single. I was on top of the world and soon the glossy magazines which I used to read on the bus going to work would be featuring my name, Alfred Jones, and teens like myself would read about me and be inspired. All I needed was a good event that could brand me as an approachable, young man and the record company had an idea.

“Get in touch with your very first follower,” they suggested. “Show that you care. Invite them to a private concert or something.” I remembered my first follower. His name was ICameForTheView and he had never left a comment on any of my videos and never replied to my messages. I wrote him when he started following me, all excited about hearing why he liked my stuff, but he never got back to me.

Somehow I found getting in touch with him now was a bad idea - after all he would only reply because I was now famous, but I felt forced by the producers and still sat down and typed in a message. I sent it in the evening and the next morning he’d deleted his account. He was off of Youtube and I had no idea where he was or how to find him. My very first follower had disappeared. The company suggested I just picked my second follower, a girl who had commented on all my videos and always wrote me cute messages and sent me pictures of herself. I did as told and she screamed her way through the private concert at her home, hugging and fondling an old scarf I’d been wearing going there. But it didn’t feel right and I couldn’t give her my best. All I thought about was why my very first follower who’d watched all my videos and put them in neat playlists had not wanted to get in touch with me. I wondered where he was.

Meanwhile my success grew. I had three CDs in store and was working on my fourth, but my focus wasn’t on music anymore. I had to focus on the interviews and how I presented myself, and soon I didn’t even write my own lyrics but had them done by an aged man who had the talent but not the voice. I thought no one would care until I received a letter one day.

“Don’t get lazy, get writing.  
ICameForTheView.”

There was no address on the back, but the handwriting was neat and the paper golden. It felt thick and expensive, and the cream envelope made the letter look professional. But there was nothing which could point me in the direction of the writer and it angered me. I had tried my best to get in touch with him and let him have his fame, but he’d dared to log off and just disappear for years, only to return with a letter like this. It bothered me so much that I sat down that evening trying to write my own lyrics to prove him wrong. I had the right paper, the right desk with adjustable legs, a comfortable chair and a thick pen filled with blue ink, but I had no inspiration. I had never been less inspired in my whole life. Back when I lived in a small flat together with a junkie who escaped reality by living in his room constantly, I’d been inspired. I sat on a sorry excuse for a pillow on the floor, writing things in my old notebook. I had thousands of ideas for songs back then and now all I had was a paycheck for my lack of imagination and my pretty smile. And I wondered: was he right?

For weeks I didn’t show myself. I wore a thick, black hoodie and wandered the streets at night, hanging out at bus stops long after the last bus had left. I hoped the fresh air would make me think again, but I felt everything in me had been shut down. That’s when I found a magazine sticking up from a bin. It was of the same kind which I used to read but hadn’t looked in for months, and I dragged it out of the trash and sat down on the ground as I flipped through the pages. There I saw his name, ICameForTheView, and I knew it had to be the same because he was interviewed about his old Youtube account and he talked about how it was an outlet for him. At first I didn’t read the interview; I skimmed through the text to see the same username pop up three times and then I looked at the picture of him, a young, slender man with green eyes and nicely combed, blond hair. Underneath the picture it said: Arthur Kirkland, and further down in a facts-box it said: Arthur Kirkland just published his second collection of poems and drawings. His books are tales about life as a deaf person and how he experiences the world through his eyes rather than his ears.

Then it hit me; ICameForTheView was deaf. He had been following me as a singer, but he’d been deaf and he hadn’t heard the noise from my guitar or the rough deepness to my voice. But he’d seen me and he’d been inspired. It said so in the interview. ‘There was a Youtube-user who meant the world to me,’ it said. ‘He was a musician and a singer, and naturally he was unattainable to me in some ways. But not in all ways. I could tell from his face that he was sincere about what he was doing, he was passionate, and as he started posting his lyrics as well, I read them flow from his lips and felt I could almost hear him sing. My body vibrated. It was as if I became alive. He made me realise how powerful words can be even when you cannot hear them. So I started writing lyrics. Everyone laughed at me. They said I should write fiction, because what does a deaf person know about hearing? I felt ridiculed. Years later the user who inspired me tried getting in touch with me, but I had had enough of being ridiculed at that time. Instead I started writing poems and that’s what got me here. Poems are beautiful. But I would love to have them sung.’

I started crying. I couldn’t help myself. I sat on the pavement in the cold night and cried, and then I got onto the first bus that passed by and drove to the city. I waited outside a random bookshop for hours until it opened in the morning and first thing I did was to buy Arthur’s two books. I brought them home with me, disconnected my phone and started reading them. They were stunning; the way he mixed his awkward drawings with the well-chosen words left me at awe. I was brought on an adventure through a life I never would experience myself. I learned the frightening feeling of jumping aside at a green light because an approaching ambulance had not turn on the lights, but only their howling sounds which I didn’t know of. I learned the beauty of watching a record player swing around the record without any sound reaching me. And I felt the thrill of vibrations going through my body whenever someone spoke words with their lips pressed to my skin.

I was inspired. I sat down with my guitar and one of Arthur’s poems, and I started singing it. At first the words felt strange in my mouth; they were not professional, but beautiful in their own simplicity, and I struggled for hours until I was able to capture that rare innocence from a writer’s first draft. In the early morning hours, with drowsy eyes and a throat hurting from singing, I set up my camera and recorded the result. I named the song View Me, and set it off to the e-mail Arthur had been listed with in the magazine.

I waited for days. Then for weeks. There was no sign of Arthur. I was bugged about my next CD and though I felt like working on these poems, these beauties I had discovered, I had to suck it up and get going. I thought I would never get a sign from my very first follower until my mail was suddenly returned.

‘That’s a private concert I would like to attend,’ he wrote. ‘Would you give me a second chance?’

It’s now two years later and Arthur and I are working on a music video. It combines his art and poems with my music and singing, and I don’t think I have ever been more excited about anything in my whole life.


End file.
